I'm a Swedish comics creator who have drawn comics and written stories since I was a child. My main interest besides comics is greek mythology, which inspires many of my own comics. I've also done historical as well as realistic and autobiographical comics. I publish my own fanzine, Agnosis. Some of my inspiration comes from Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze), Tinet Elmgren (Driftwood) and Sussie Bech (Nofret).

Other interests are religion/mythology, history, literature, philosophy and drinking tea. I listen mostly to synth and chiptunes and am very fond of old 8-bit video games.

The marriage ritual with Dionysos and the basilinna ("queen") during the Anthesteria is usually said to have taken place in a building called the Boukoleion. I've seen different translations of the name, but at least it’s something with "bull" in it.

Hades doesn’t like necromancers, so the relation between him and Hekate is quite strained, to say the least. In my previous comic Destroyer of Light, page 15, Hekate told Demeter and Persephone about the incident they’re referring to.

Even if Persephone kind of invited Hades, she never really expected him to come.

Fun fact: In Swedish (my native language) the word for uncle is different depending on if you’re referring to your mother’s brother ("morbror") or your father’s brother ("farbror"). Now, as we all know, Persephone’s parents are siblings, so Hades is both her mother’s brother and her father’s brother. However, in my comics she always refers to him as her "mother’s brother" (the few times she refers to him like that at all), and likewise she refers to Rhea as her "mother’s mother". One would expect her to do it the other way, since this is a patriarchal society and Zeus is the head of the family, but Persephone has grown up in a kind of… feminist bubble, to use a modern word. And Demeter is the parent that matters to her.

The site of the shrine of Dionysos in the Marshes is uncertain. Thucydides says that it was the most ancient site of the worship of Dionysos, and implies that it was on the southward side of the Acropolis, but the exact location is unknown. I chose to place it in a marshy area outside the city wall, because I think it will fit my story best.

Miasma in ancient Greek religion is understood as “pollution”, something you have to be purified from. It is usually connected to blood crime and having the dead angry at you. In my comics I use it to refer to the “pollution” caused by the dead.

The second day of the festival was called Choes, “beakers”, referring to a special kind of wine-jug. It seems to have been common to give children miniature forms of these as presents during the Anthesteria.

… Hello, everybody, I’m back. Well, at least I have a script for a few more pages.

There are many uncertainties regarding the Anthesteria that makes it a bit difficult to reconstruct the festival. In my comic I will adjust things to suit my story rather than trying to be as correct as possible. For one thing, it’s probably one month too late for the Anthesteria, since the festival took place at the end of winter/beginning of spring, but in my comic spring seems to have fully arrived already.

The first day of the festival was called Pithoigia, “jar-opening”, when people tasted their new wine. One account says that the Athenians used to bring samples of their new wine to the shrine of Dionysos in the Marshes and there mix it with water. The first mixed wine was offered to the god and while pouring the libation they prayed that the wine would be harmless and beneficial to them. I’ve borrowed parts from the Homeric Hymn 26 to Dionysos and the Orphic Hymn 50 to Lysios Lenaios to the priestess’ prayer.

In ancient Greece some types of dead were believed to be more likely to become restless and haunt the living: ataphoi (those who have not received funeral rites), aōroi (those who have died too young), and biaiothanatoi (those who have died violently). I know that this kind of goes against my first comic Nekyia, where Hades seems to be quite unaware of why some of the dead remain in the upper world. Maybe he has done some investigations since then and figured a few things out?

And here we see parts of Persephone’s letter (which she was writing in the end of my previous comic Destroyer of Light).